After Richard and Linda Thompson
 
Here and gone, the casualties of heaven
where, as the singer says, they gather as one.
Here, a little something for the others
at the bar. You can be Lord Jesus,
she sings, all the world would understand.
The world, she says, and gestures to the walls.
Between strokes of the plectrum a pool  
of sound like water that is green and clear.
And then I see a face across the surface.
A friend told me he had trouble sleeping. 
The first sign. First of the notes left behind.
I am an orphan of days I cannot conjure.
God knows why. My friend loved this song.
How quickly we say love in the older tense.